Newt Gingrich

When Nelson Mandela crossed over from revolutionary to statesman, most of the world cheered. Most, but not all. For many American conservatives both in life and in death Mandela remained nothing more than an old “communist” and “terrorist” as they damned him with both faint praise and withering contempt.

Conservatives are not inherently racist. Neither are Republicans. However, too often conservatives and Republicans side with racists whether it be a president cravenly supporting the apartheid regime in Africa or rallying to defend a Louisiana redneck’s moronic views about gays and Blacks and so the image becomes the reality.

I don’t like Newt Gingrich. Not even a bit. I think he’s a race-baiter, a pompous and insufferable egotist and a major contributor to the current political dysfunction in Washington, but even a bad man can do a good thing.

I have to respect Gingrich for having the guts to set the record straight on Mandela despite the howling of his conservative cohorts who attempted to demonize the legendary Lion of South Africa.

Some of the people who are most opposed to oppression from Washington attack Mandela when he was opposed to oppression in his own country.

After years of preaching non-violence, using the political system, making his case as a defendant in court, Mandela resorted to violence against a government that was ruthless and violent in its suppression of free speech.

As Americans we celebrate the farmers at Lexington and Concord who used force to oppose British tyranny. We praise George Washington for spending eight years in the field fighting the British Army’s dictatorial assault on our freedom.

Thomas Jefferson wrote and the Continental Congress adopted that “all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Doesn’t this apply to Nelson Mandela and his people?

Some conservatives say, ah, but he was a communist.

Actually Mandela was raised in a Methodist school, was a devout Christian, turned to communism in desperation only after South Africa was taken over by an extraordinarily racist government determined to eliminate all rights for blacks.

I would ask of his critics: where were some of these conservatives as allies against tyranny? Where were the masses of conservatives opposing Apartheid? In a desperate struggle against an overpowering government, you accept the allies you have just as Washington was grateful for a French monarchy helping him defeat the British.

Finally, if you had been imprisoned for 27 years, 18 of them in a cell eight foot by seven-foot, how do you think you would have emerged? Would you have been angry? Would you have been bitter?

Nelson Mandela emerged from 27 years in prison as an astonishingly wise, patient, and compassionate person.

He called for reconciliation among the races. He invited his prison guard to sit in the front row at his inauguration as President. In effect he said to the entire country, “If I can forgive the man who imprisoned me, surely you can forgive your neighbors.”

Far from behaving like a communist, President Mandela reassured businesses that they could invest in South Africa and grow in South Africa. He had learned that jobs come from job creators.

I was very privileged to be able to meet with President Mandela and present the Congressional Medal of Freedom. As much as any person in our lifetime he had earned our respect and our recognition.

Before you criticize him, ask yourself, what would you have done in his circumstances?

There is an expectation that the oppressed are expected to be non-violent in the face of violent oppression. This tactic worked for Gandhi and Martin Luther King, but it was not going to work for Mandela in light of the vicious determination of the Afrikaner government to keep the Black majority of South Africa controlled body, mind and soul.

Gingrich is a student of history and as such knows not all revolutions succeed without taking up the gun and the bomb. Mandela led a social revolution and became a statesman. Gingrich led a political revolution and found common ground with Mandela in a rare example of statesmanship.

Gingrich didn’t have to call out his fellow conservatives for their classless attacks on Mandela, but I’m impressed he did. Tomorrow I can go back to despising the ground he walks on.

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President Obama was asked about the Trayvon Martin shooting. He replied cautiously but he didn’t duck the question

President Barack Obama said Friday that “every aspect” of the death of Trayvon Martin, the black teenager shot in Florida last month, must be investigated.

“My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin: If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said. “I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and we’re going to get to the bottom of what happened.”

Asked by NBC’s Mike Viqueira to comment on the Martin case, which has prompted national outrage after the shooter evaded arrest for claiming he shot the unarmed teen out of self-defense, Obama said, “Obviously, this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids.”

He added, “I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and that everybody pulls together – federal, state, and local – to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.”

“All of us have to do some soul-searching to do figure out how something like this happens,” Obama told reporters.

The president’s remark were measured, thoughtful and sympathetic to the Martin family. He hit all the right notes which would be slightly offset by the tone-deaf and brain-dead remarks of Geraldo Rivera, the Fox News personality (you couldn’t call him a “journalist”) who despite nobody having asked for his opinion declared wearing a hoodie killed Trayvon as much as Zimmerman’s bullets did.

When you see a kid walking down the street, particularly dark-skinned kid like my son Cruz — who I constantly yelled at when he was going out wearing a damn hoodie or those pants around his ankles. “Take that hood off!” People look at you and what’s the instant identification, what’s the instant association? It’s those crime scene surveillance tapes. Every time you see someone stickin’ up a 7-11, the kid’s wearing a hoodie. Every time you see a mugging on a surveillance camera or they get the old lady in the alcove, it’s a kid wearing a hoodie. You have to recognize that this whole stylizing yourself as a “gangsta”… You’re gonna be a gangsta wanna? Well, people are going to perceive you as a menace. That’s what happens. It is an instant reflexive action.

Oh, shut up, you miserable HACK.

Rivera takes blaming the victim to an absurd new low. If only Tracy Martin had dressed his son better before allowing him to leave home, why he still might be alive according to Rivera’s perverse logic.

Then the equally swinish Newt Gingrich got in on the act to criticize the president for saying if he had a son, that son would look like Trayvon.

“It’s not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We should all be horrified no matter what the ethnic background,” Gingrich said. “Is the President suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot that would be ok because it didn’t look like him?”

Earlier in the day Gingrich told reporters that he thought the case should be investigated and suggested the shooter was at fault.

“That’s just nonsense dividing this country up. It is a tragedy this young man was shot,” Gingrich continued on Hannity’s show. “It would have been a tragedy if he had been Puerto Rican or Cuban or if he had been white or if he had been Asian-American of if he’d been a Native American. At some point we ought to talk about being Americans. When things go wrong to an American. It is sad for all Americans. Trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong. I really find it appalling.”

This definitely is a racial issue and it is definitely was a case of someone who didn’t look White suffering the consequences because a bully and punk with a gun didn’t like those kind of people in his neighborhood. Why can’t Gingrich figure that out if he’s supposed to be a smart guy?

Probably because he’s not and this is way outside of the right-wing comfort zone. They like their Black teenagers as predators, not victims. Fox News was slow on their coverage about Trayvon Martin and now they’re chasing the story trying to catch up. But this is not the kind of subject the Right has comfort with. If only Zimmerman had been a cop. Fox would have no problem rationalizing this all way as a justified shooting.

Minus that angle, people who historically have shown indifference and hostility towards Blacks now have to try to show they can be sympathetic instead. Could they look any more awkwardly inept trying to?

Why do Geraldo and Newt say stupid shit? For the same reason a dog licks his own balls: Because they can.

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Romney would like to focus on Obama, but he has to shake Santorum before he can.

Stupor Tuesday came and went. It was a beautiful spring-like day in early March and unseasonably warm like this whole winter have been. I thought, “What better way to enjoy the day than to go to the polls, declare myself a Republican and screw up Mitt Romney’s life more than it already is by voting for Rick “Foamy” Santorum.

If I could have I would have. Actually, I could have, but then I wouldn’t have been able to vote for any of the Democratic candidates running for state and local offices. I decided to keep my monkey wrench in my pocket and leave it to the real Republicans to decide between Dumb and Dumber.

Mittens beat out Foamy to win Stupor Tuesday’s biggest prize, but it wasn’t by much and crossover voters didn’t tip the results Foamy’s way. In Ohio, you have to declare your party affiliation before you cast your ballot, so only the Dems who fibbed and played Republican-For-A-Day were able to make Mitt’s night miserable.

I’m not surprised Mittens won. He outspent Foamy 4-to-1 in Ohio, but only could squeak out a 1 point “victory.” Not much to brag about when you consider your opponent lost his Senate seat in 2006 by 18 points. Of course, in the grand scheme of things they don’t ask how much you won by just that you won, but Mittens still ain’t feeling the conservative base love.

As far as this supposed fired-up Republican base chomping at the bit to turn out President Obama it wasn’t in evidence here. My daughter worked the polls as part of her “Youth at the Booth” volunteer program and was at her station from 5:30 am to 8:30 pm to help voters.

Less than 200 bothered to show up. Where’s all that Republican rage to beat Obama I keep hearing about?

What does Mittens’ incredible, overwhelming, devastating “win” in O-H-I-O mean? Some victories are less than meets the eye and this one qualifies.

Before the Michigan primary last week, Romney said he wasn’t willing to light his hair on fire to win the election. But in looking at Tuesday’s exit polls, he must at least be ready to pull his hair out. Fifty-four percent of voters said the economy was the most important issue in determining their vote, and they voted for Romney by 41 percent to Santorum’s 33 percent. Forty-two percent of voters in Ohio said they wanted a candidate who could beat Barack Obama. That was the top quality they sought in a candidate. Romney won in that group 52 percent to 27 percent. Voters also said they preferred a candidate with business experience over government experience by 64 percent to 27 percent.

All of that would suggest a big Romney win, right? Nope. Voters want something else, too. In Ohio, the other half of the electorate cared about who was the true conservative, and Santorum crushed Romney 51 percent to 13 percent on that score. The 21 percent who cared about moral character likewise went for Santorum by 40 points over Romney, 60 percent to 19 percent. Ohio voters also felt like Santorum shares their concerns more than Romney, a big problem for Romney in a key bellwether state. The state has picked the president since 1964. The Republican candidate will have to beat Obama on that important economic question. That Romney can’t convince members of his own party—particularly blue-collar voters he’ll need in the general election—is not a good sign.

Mittens: "Oh Rick, you're so firm and strong and tough. Gimme a hug." Foamy: "Better back off me, Rich Boy. I don't play that."

Santorum is going to start feeling the pressure from Republicans who say he should hang it up to keep from damaging Romney too much. The math is inevitable, so all he’ll do is weaken Romney in his ultimate contest against Obama. Romney is already suffering from the bruising primary battle. In the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Romney’s unfavorable rating has grown to 39 percent. His favorable rating is only 28 percent. The longer the battle drags on, the less time Romney will have to raise money and repair the damage done by the primaries.

The Romney campaign never wanted to be seen arguing that Romney was inevitable. Now they’re doing just that. It’s a version of the argument that the Obama campaign made in 2008 when it tried to get Hillary Clinton to turn around her campaign bus. The key difference is that Barack Obama was filling stadiums of rabid supporters at the time. Mitt Romney is not burdened with this problem.

Meanwhile…what about the ever so loveable Dr. No (a.k.a. The Artist Formerly Known As Ron Paul). How did he fare on Stupor Tuesday?

Same as Paul always does. He lost. Repeatedly and everywhere.

Paul was hoping Alaska might give him his first win in the primaries. Alaskans gave him 24 percent of their votes. Good enough for third place behind Mittens and Foamy.

At least Paul’s Alaska showing and the 40 percent he raked off in Virgina where he and Mittens were the only two boobs on the ballot, he can turn to the Newster at the next debate and sneer, “in yo’ face, sucka!” As if they both aren’t as ugly as their personalities. Bragging rights ain’t much, but that’s about all Paul’s got left. He did have some nice lawn signs though. I look for those sort of things and I didn’t spot a single one for Mittens, Foamy or the Newster. Not a one.

Never confuse enthusiasm and volume with actual numbers and genuine commitment. The Paulinistas make a big noise, but they aren’t a big deal.

What exactly was settled by Stupor Tuesday? A few things we already knew. Mittens has the money, the organization, no firm beliefs and he can’t close the sale with the conservative base with the “only one who can beat Barack Obama” pitch.. Foamy has firm beliefs but they’re all crazy ones. Gingrich’s Angry Fat White Man has played out but he still says he’s the one who can go toe-to-toe and beat Obama in a debate, but the presidency isn’t the price award to Best Debater.

Poor old Ron is a bad joke worn thin to everyone except the fanatical few (and getting fewer every day). Paul was only running for president because he wasn’t running for another term in the House, and really, it’s not as if he has anything better to do with his time.

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Even the most hardcore political junkie needs to detox every so often. Especially when the Republicans are determined to drive the collective intelligence of the American people down ten to twenty points. When Rick “Foamy” Santorum sneers at President Obama as a “snob” for encouraging attending a college and bettering the chances of snagging a good paying job, we have definitely hit bottom.

As dumb as the Republican presidential candidates have been and all the dumb things they have said, Foamy just totally abuses the limits of how extreme a candidate can be. Santorum denounces the divide between church and state, going so far as to declare when President Kennedy declared his Catholic faith would not influence his decisions, it made him “sick.”

Which couldn’t be better if the Democrats had planned it.. The more Foamy comes out as the American Taliban, the more he marginalizes himself. His appeal to conservatives as the newest Not Romney and the Anti-Obama is a kick-butt strategy in the primaries where the partisans eat it up on a spoon, but would get him nowhere in a general election.

Foamy is a better presidential nominee than Mittens because not only would Obama whip his monkey ass, Foamy would be a drag on the entire Republican Party ticket. There were fears in 2008 that John McCain had more appeal to independent voters due to the respect and admiration he earned as a conservative willing to buck the party line and reach out to his Democratic colleagues in the Senate.

But Santorum was never a leader and he wasn’t respected. He’s always been a right-wing tool and so entrenched as a far-right winger he couldn’t possibly convince independents and moderate voters he’s even close to holding centrist positions. By definition that makes him unelectable. The party establishment knows that which is why they have to destroy Santorum and continue to prop up Romney.

Santorum has bet it all on the idea that the GOP will penalize moderates and reward extremists. As bets go, it’s not an unsound one, but it leaves him no wiggle room in a general election. With Mittens eking out a three-point “win” over Foamy in his home state of Michigan and slaughtering him in Arizona, his rocky road to the Republican nomination is back on track, but Romney is being diminished, not strengthened the longer it takes him to knock off his challengers. He looks weak, unpopular with the base, and he can’t focus on preparing for Obama while he’s fending off first Newt Gingrich and now Santorum on his his right flank.

I’m not worried about Foamy becoming the next President of the United States. I’d like him to continue bloodying Mittens and softening him up. I’d like the current version of the Republican Party to go out of business and be reborn minus the racists, the homophobes and the sexists trying to regulate a woman’s womb.
There are already Obama supporters who can’t stop laughing at the Republicans auditioning for who can be the biggest tool. I have had my share of laughs as well, but I’m not about to declare this race over and done.

There are no sure things this many months out from Election Day. The economic recovery is soft and can go south if unemployment creeps back up or Israel attacks Iran and a new crisis in the Middle East flares up. There is always the possibility of a scandal or another terrorist attack.

The odds of a second term for the president are getting better, but while Team Obama shares the amusement of watching the Republicans ripping into each other, they aren’t permitting themselves the luxury of assuming they don’t have to win the election. When the GOP finally gets their act together they are going to come at Obama with everything they have.

Negative ads and nasty campaigning? We’ve only just begun.

Obama should run scared because what lies ahead is a lot scarier than anything Mittens, Foamy or the Newtster can throw at him.

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By any standard, the candidates running for the Republican presidential nomination are a sad bunch of retreads, weaklings, reactionaries and fatally flawed losers. Mitt Romney is the quintessential rich White man who can barely keep up a brave face when he’s mingling with the unwashed masses, but he’s willing to put on a brave face and hold his nose if that’s what it takes to win.

Newt Gingrich is a narcissist and an egotist whose intellectual racism and repulsive personality makes him hard even for conservatives to take. Then there’s Ron Paul. He’s a special case. He’s not a great thinker like Gingrich or a flip-flopping fake like Romney. No other candidate can claim the kind of enthusiastic support as Paul does. No other candidate seems as genuine and unpretentious as Paul.

There’s also no other candidate as extreme and out of the mainstream as Paul. I’ve made my case against Baby Doc Paul that he is an unworthy of the presidency. The Washington Post ripped away Paul’s ass-covering lies that he wasn’t aware of the racist material in his newsletters.

I don’t expect the Paul die-hards and dead enders to be the least bit disabused of their fantasy that he is a kindly old man who speaks truth to power and advocates a handful of positions that attracts uninformed liberals. Theirs is a separate reality where neither light nor truth penetrates.

The true believers are with Paul all the way until the last bomb falls on the bunker. It’s the rail-sitters and undecided who will have to finally make a call and choose between acknowledging Ron Paul either is a racist personally or just a cynical politician and manipulative businessman willing to exploit racial and homophobic fears to make a dirty buck.

What comes next in tomorrow’s primary in Florida?

Romney crushes Gingrich by double digits. The anti-Romney forces will continue to bitch and moan, but their failure to coalesce behind a single candidate makes them an annoyance, not an insurmountable obstacle. Their choices will come down to holding their nose and pulling the lever for Mitt or watch Obama raising his right hand again next January. Screw the Tea Party! They will get nothing but insincere lip service from Romney and they deserve nothing.

Paul soldiers out looking for friendlier (and cheaper) caucus states and other places where the Ron Paul Race War Revolution might play well. He’ll hang around like a bad odor while he decides whether to launch another rogue run as an independent. Sonny boy Rand might tell dear old dad to sit his ass down in a rocking chair somewhere as not to cock block his inevitable bid in 2016.

Santorum is toast. Put the pennies on the eyes. His moment of glory came and went in Iowa, proving yet again that the best thing that unrepresentative state contributes to presidential contests is exposing weak candidates not ready for the real deal and croaking wannabees who had no business running in the first place. One less repulsive right-winger gone. No great loss.

Which doesn’t mean Rick Santorum isn’t deserving of scorn for his reprehensible remarks about rape victims and abortion. Isn’t it always the way that it’s the most pious and supposedly reverentially religious bastards who have so much love in their hearts for the unborn and nothing but contempt for the living?

On the way home the other day I passed a church where there were 150 little white crosses in the ground and a sign that read, “In the last hour there were 150 children destroyed by abortion.”

That’s pretty heavy-handed, but it takes a prick like Santorum to make it even worse for women facing the difficult choice whether to have an abortion. Piers Morgan interviewed Santorum and asked him if he could deny his daughter an abortion if she were impregnated through an act of rape.

Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn’t have this baby, if she kills her child, that, too, could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice. I understand that. As horrible as the way that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn’t, it will always be her child. And she will always know that. And so to embrace her and to love her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time, I’ve always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you.

I despise Santorum. He is one of those far Right extremists whom I am incapable of saying a good word about. Beyond his casual racism, there’s his overt hatred of women. I don’t know how you could characterize Santorum’s stupidly sanctimonious remarks as anything but the most repellent kind of misogyny.

Leave it up to a man who will never face an unwanted pregnancy brought out by an act of violence to make an awful situation even worse. Why is the same people who decry government regulation and intrusions into the private life of Americans espouse views where the womb becomes a state-owned asset?

I don’t have an answer, so I turn to the Church of Carlin for one.

Sanctimonious Santorum will be a historical footnote in a matter of weeks or days. Gingrich will soon follow, but after thwarting his threat to Romney in Iowa and again in Florida, the GOP will try to shoot Newt’s zombie campaign of White Rage in the head and put him down once and for all. The powers that be want an electable empty suit to take on President Obama, not a self-centered “big thinker” who wants to colonize the moon.

The Republican establishment wants Mittens vs. Obama and they’re determined to get it.

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You'd look like her too if you had to see Newt Gingrich naked all the time.

The Mitt Romney Inevitability Express went off the rails in South Carolina as the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party found himself losing a race he thought he had won to a fat, unlikable, career politician with an even stupider nickname than his, Newton Leroy Gingrich, also known and despised as Newt.

What made Mitt’s trip down South really suck was he thought after Iowa the torrent of negative ads he and the unaffiliated Super PACS had launched against the former Speaker of the House had finished him off.. However, the lust of GOP conservatives for someone to articulate their hatred of President Obama burns strong as does their desire for an alternative to the rich Mormon who stashes his cash in the Cayman Island. Losing to Newt 40 percent to 27 percent should send a clear message to the Massachusetts millionaire: the rank and file just aren’t into you–still.

I missed the Republican debate the other night where Gingrich went right-the-freak-off on CNN’s John King for having the elephant balls to ask him about ex-wife, Marianne Gingrich’s accusation that the Newster wanted an open marriage so he could continue banging his booty call and eventual third wife, Callista.

Life is too short to waste it on bad movies, bad music, and bad politicians bumping their gums talkin’ loud and sayin’ nothin’. I know there was a debate the other night. I had far more important things to do than watch that crap. Like peeling a potato or clipping my toenails or picking lint out of my belly button.

South Carolina doesn’t totally change the Republican race as much as it makes it possible it might go on longer than the experts had though. Romney believed he had things locked up once Chris Christie decided to stay home eating donuts. Christie was the only candidate who could have pulled together the diverse wings of the GOP in a united front against President Obama. His decision to sit out 2012 prompted most of the big money and establishment decided to fall in line behind Romney leaving the hard core Right with nowhere to go and no one to slow Mitt’s roll to the nomination.

But a funny thing happened on the road to Inevitability. Here we are three contests in and the front-runner’s only victory came in a state he was supposed to win. The scorecard so far reads Rick Santorum winning Iowa, Mittens taking New Hampshire and the Newster rising from the ashes to kick Mitt’s ass in South Carolina. Now it’s on to Florida where the results could boost the winner of that state to a the inside track to the nomination or scramble the race so badly, Mitt and Newt might slug it out all the way through January into the spring.

South Carolina did us the great favor of ending the campaigns of Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman. So why is Ron Paul hanging on for? Paul’s support is loud but not broad. He came in third in Iowa, settled for second in New Hampshire, was dead on arrival and if he steps foot in Florida the only reason will be to work on his tan and get a fresh-squeezed glass of orange juice. Florida is heavily made up of elderly Jewish voters and though Paul is 76-years old, his anti-Israel, anti-Social Security rhetoric won’t play there.

In a normal year, a sleazy douchebag like Newt Gingrich would be bumping around in the lower strata with the rest of the also-rans, but this is not a normal year. If his record of unethical behavior weren’t enough to sink him like a stone, Newt’s loose zipper would be enough to disqualify him from serious consideration as a serious contender. Newt is such a man-whore that if he were elected president he would be our commander-in-briefs (tip of the hat to Sandra Booker for that one) whose roving eye means at any moment he might up and leave America for a younger and fresher country (and thank you Rena Marrocco for that).

Regardless of South Carolina, Newt is still big pimpin’ with small bills. He doesn’t have Romney’s resources to wage a long, protracted and expensive war of attrition. It may take Romney longer than he planned and cost him more money before he finally crushes the Newt under his heel, but the bet here is when the final drop of blood is spilled in the GOP Civil War, Mittens will be the victor.

But Mitt will have to try to get to the right of Newt to knock him out and the further he drifts away from his moderate reputation, the harder it will be for him to get back and disavow all the positions he’s taken that will be showing up in Obama 2012 attack ads.

Football is my favorite sport, but watching Republicans claw, fang and devour each other is my favorite bloodsport. It’s been simply splendid entertainment.

“I believe Newt is a conservative visionary who can transform this country,” Perry said.

Making what he called a “strategic retreat,” the Texan obliquely referred to Gingrich’s checkered personal life just hours before an interview with the former House speaker’s second wife was to speak out in a TV interview.

“Newt is not perfect, but who among us is?” said Perry.

Citing his Christian faith, Perry said of Gingrich: “I believe in the power of redemption.

“I will leave the trail, return home to Texas, and wind down my 2012 campaign. And I will do so with pride.”

Pride? You mean the closeted and self-hating kind of gay pride, Rick? Not sayin’, just sayin’.

Perry entered the presidential race with every advantage, money, experience, great hair and no idea how to run for president, so he ran one of the worst campaigns I’ve ever seen. Inept in live debate, reactionary in his positions and painfully inarticulate in public, Perry is a heavyweight in Texas, but outside of it, he repeatedly proved he simply was not ready for prime time. After stumbling and bumbling his way through debate after debate, Perry’s poll numbers fell off a cliff as he was elbowed aside by other equally reactionary Anti-Romney candidates.

Perry tried to be the most reactionary Republican in a campaign full of them. His only success came when he entered the race he effectively burst Michelle Bachmann’s bubble, but his fellow Texan, Ron Paul had already staked out the White supremacist/extremist constituency, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were far more skilled at race-baiting leaving Perry with no room on the Right to move to.

Game, set, match. Perry did nothing in Iowa, disappeared in New Hampshire and two days before voters in South Carolina could humiliate him further, Perry quit. Perry had become so irrelevant to Mitt Romney’s eventuality that when he announced he was hanging up his spurs, it wasn’t even the top story of the day. The news media was focusing on one of Newt Gingrich’s ex-wives going on ABC to out the former Speaker of the House as a freak who wanted an “open marriage.’

The speculation is Perry will try again in 2016. The same thing is said about every unsuccessful candidate whether their name is Bachmann, Cain, Pawlenty, or Huntsman. These are not temporary setbacks that can be resolved by licking their wounds and retreating from the national stage. These are failures and losers.

Out of all the contenders, none of them fell off as fast and landed as hard as little Ricky Perry. The far-right, religious freak and potential closet case that couldn’t.

I’d really like to get past all the opening acts and proceed directly to the Obama versus Mitt brawl for it all, but we can’t fast forward it past the preliminaries to the main event quite yet, so instead of being first I’ll get the last word in on the Iowa caucus. Mitt Romney “won” by a whopping eight votes while Rick Santorum could claim the title as the newest Not Mitt Romney with his surge into second place.

Romney came into Iowa late while Santorum practically moved in having traveled to every country in the state. Romney’s victory almost qualifies as a tie and a tie with Santorum counts as a loss for Romney.

On to New Hampshire. Winning there won’t prove anything as that’s Romney’s firewall state and he’s expected to clobber all comers. If Santorum is smart (and if he was he wouldn’t be Rick Santorum), he should forget New Hampshire, let Mitt have his cheap win there and go straight to South Carolina where his culture warrior extremism may play well.

I quit. Nobody cares.

The life of an Anti-Romney is a short one and it’s obviously Slick Rick II’s time to shine. Does he have staying power? Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich and Paul didn’t. Maybe he’ll be the one that does. Or at least until Romney’s super PACS get medieval on his ass.

Mitt will never going to be the guy the true believers love. They don’t believe he really believes what he’s saying and that as soon as he secures the nomination, he’s going to run so far and fast to the middle he will trample underfoot any Tea Partier that gets in his way.

Knowing this is his dilemma, Mitt won’t even waste time trying to win the love of the committed conservatives. He’ll just open up his wallet and crush Rick Santorum like a rotten orange.

Pop quiz, hotshot. What fourth-place finisher in Iowa said this about a month ago?

I’m going to be the nominee. It’s very hard not to look at the recent polls and think that the odds are very high I’m going to be the nominee.

"Vote for me and I'll get rid of the gays and Negroes."

Yep. That was Newt Gingrich swaggering and going all gangsta. Right up until Mittens and money opened up a big ol’ can of whup-ass negative ads and killed Newt’s momentum deader than Osama bin Laden.

Newt didn’t have the cash, the organization or the ability to punch back until it was all over. Santorum has the same trouble and will suffer the same fate.

Mitt isn’t going to pick anyone he doesn’t want and what does he get by picking Bachmann or Perry? Nothing. The Republicans already know they’re going to win Texas and probably Minnesota, so why pick a vice-president who (a) isn’t ready for the job and (b) brings nothing of use to the ticket?

Mitt knows he needs a battleground state. Somewhere like Florida (Marco Rubio, Rick Scott) or Virginia (Bob McDonnell) that takes it out of play for Obama and forces him to look elsewhere on the map for those much-needed electoral votes.

Second, I used to think as well, “Well, Mitt needs to appeal to the Tea Party.” And maybe he does, but not to the extent that appealing to them costs him the independent and disaffected Democratic vote. Mitt is the last Republican standing who can tack to the center in the general election. Santorum can’t and won’t. Paul could, but won’t. There’s nobody else left.

There’s not going to be a brokered convention. There isn’t going to be an 11th hour “real” conservative riding to the rescue. There’s just going to be Mitt and Barack and that’s all the choice you’re going to have besides flushing away your vote on a third-party loser.

Romney’s closing sales pitch is simple. Get all those Tea Partiers and evangelicals and other right-wingers in a room and make it so simple for them even they can’t get it confused.

You don’t like me and I don’t like you. That’s the way it is. but here’s something you may not realize. You don’t HAVE to like me. All you have to do is like the idea of a second term for Obama less.

Bottom line: Ruth Bader Ginsburg is old and she’s been sick. She might want to stay on the Supreme Court forever, but I’m gonna bet she doesn’t make it.

Eventually, she’s going to retire. Scalia might retire. Thomas too. Now who do you want choosing their replacement? Me or Obama?